


The Songs We Used to Sing

by Nightdog_Barks



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Episode Related, Fights, Flashback, Friendship, Memories, Musicians, Road Trip, Roadhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You sleep where you can and hope for the best. 616 words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Songs We Used to Sing

  
**Not from the present season.**  
 **Status:** Posted to [](http://house-wilson.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**house_wilson**](http://house-wilson.dreamwidth.org/) on 3/18/11.  
 **Title:** The Songs We Used to Sing  
 **Author:** [](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**nightdog_barks**](http://nightdog-barks.dreamwidth.org/)  
 **Characters:** House, Wilson. Mention of Amber and Crandall and an OMC. Gen.  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Warnings:** None.  
 **Spoilers:** No.  
 **Summary:** You sleep where you can and hope for the best. 616 words.  
 **Disclaimer:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **Author Notes:** This is something from Season 6, sort of an episode tag to 6.03, "Epic Fail," written when we didn't know where House was going to sleep when he moved into Wilson's apartment. Title and cut-text from the Steely Dan song [Dr. Wu](http://www.lyricsdepot.com/steely-dan/dr-wu.html).  
 **Beta:** My intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to [](http://pwcorgigirl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**pwcorgigirl**](http://pwcorgigirl.dreamwidth.org/).

 _House: You already made me get a roommate. Wilson's got one bedroom. I don't think we can get any more connected without unzipping._  
~ from _House_ episode 6.03, "Epic Fail"

  
 **  
_The Songs We Used to Sing_   
**

  
He hasn't slept with a guy for this long since ... hell, probably since Crandall. That time they'd played the club outside Metairie, and the son of a bitch club owner had screwed them over because they'd played too much _race music_ , and how old had that redneck idiot been anyway, still calling it _race music?_ And of course the redneck idiot's brother had been the chief of police, who'd smiled as he'd looked Crandall straight in the eye and told them to get the fuck out of town. That had led to sleeping on the bus for two nights, shivering in a pile of bodies -- the drummer, Rex Goforth, he'd been the warmest, one of those people whose natural body temp was always a few degrees higher than 98.6, and it had made a difference.

House stares at the ceiling. The only sound in the bedroom is Wilson's breathing and the periodic thump of the refrigerator icemaker. What ever happened to Rex Goforth? Damned if he knows -- the last place he remembers seeing him had been that _other_ club, in some no-name pulp mill town near Charlotte, when they'd all gotten their asses kicked after wading into some parking lot brawl that had nothing to do with them.

He glances over at Wilson, whose brows are knit in seeming disapproval as if he's tuned into House's stream-of-dream-consciousness and doesn't like what he's hearing.

House shifts a little in bed, stretches out his right leg, but slow so slow because it's hurting enough already. The refrigerator thumps again. He misses the silence of his own apartment, but at least here there's no long-legged blondes watching him, talking to him, whispering not-so-sweet nothings into his ear. Amber's presence here is a memory, which is what it should be -- a paper-thin shadow, an act of contrition in another room that vanishes as soon as he walks in.

No ghosts here.

A car drifts by outside; the driver's got the windows open and the radio turned up. The bass line echoes inside House's head; he catches a hint of the lyrics but can't decipher the words. Wilson makes a soft _mmphgrh_ sound and pushes his head deeper into his pillow.

The last night of that Southern tour from Hell, nobody'd wanted to sleep on the bus again, but they'd been so broke they could only afford one room in a pathetic little motel that could've given the Bates family a run for its money. House had lain there next to Crandall, who snored like a ruptured steam engine, and at three in the morning he'd heard a bird singing outside. A fucking bird. At three in the morning.

It was a mockingbird, of course -- _Mimus polyglottos_ , because he'd looked it up later. That bird had sung its damn heart out, riff after riff, notes ascending and descending and doubling back on themselves to start again in a progression that would have made Bach weep with envy. After a while, though, House could detect the repetition, the sameness of the endless song. Every pass a little different, but the same, over and over again.

What had Nolan said? We'll try something different, and if that doesn't work, something else.

"House," Wilson mumbles, and House jumps. Wilson's left hand pats clumsily at House's shoulder.

"Can hear you thinking all th'way over here," Wilson says. "Go t'sleep."

"Sorry," House mumbles, but Wilson's already turned over, and he's said it to his back. House settles back into his own pillow. Tomorrow he'll walk into Cuddy's office and ask for his old job back.

 _Something different,_ he thinks, and imagines the song of the mockingbird.

~ fin

  
Now with a wonderful companion fic! From [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/flywoman/profile)[**flywoman**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/flywoman/) \-- [Familiar Rhythms](http://flywoman.livejournal.com/46471.html).


End file.
